Tuesday, May 27, 2014

The World's Largest Pothole

I have a love-hate relationship with National Parks. On the
upside, they have great infrastructure, great informational resources, and
great scenery. Think of Yellowstone, the Tetons, the Smokies… these are America’s
best ideas. On the downside, trying to navigate the red tape to obtain a
backcountry permit can be absolutely maddening. So I was understandably nervous
about last weekend’s trip to Bryce Canyon National Park. There’s really only
one backpacking trail in the park, there are camping quotas, and Memorial Day
weekend could be the busiest weekend of the year there. Would I be able to get
campsites for my nights there?

After driving down on Friday evening and bivvying in the
back of my car on National Forest land, I arrived at the park around 6AM on
Saturday, long before the backcountry permit office opened. Sure enough, I was
the very first one in line. In fact, when the office opened at 8AM, I was still
one of only two people there. There was currently only one backpacker in the
backcountry. I had my choice of sites and itineraries. Except for one hitch:
the entire southern section of the park’s backcountry was closed due to a “problem
bear”.

At this juncture I should explain: High-use areas of the
backcountry (such as National Parks) tend to attract a disproportionate amount
of idiots. These fine folks waltz into the wilderness without preparation whatsoever.
They’ve done no research, have not educated themselves on treating Creation
with respect… and end up providing bears with lots of tasty human snacks. After
bears discover that raiding human camps at night for unsecured food is a
prosperous endeavor, bears associate humans with food. You can imagine the
danger that a habituated bear poses to campers. So after all of rampant
stupidity on the part of humans, and ingenuity on the part of the bears, it’s the
bears who of course are the “problem”. They’re relocated to very remote areas
or, more often, killed.

I managed to snag a campside in the northern part of the
park for a night, and had to settle for hiking about 12 of the 25 miles that
compose the “Under-the-rim” trail, which I had been planning to do in its entirety.
Because I wasn’t about to try hitching under the officious eyes of the park
rangers, I had to take a shuttle bus to my trailhead. The shuttle was designed
more as a tourist ride than as a means of transportation, so the whole endeavor
took me about three hours to go the ten miles. On the plus side, it did allow
me to see some of the sights in the southern end of the park that I would have
otherwise missed. Finally, on about noon on Saturday, I got on the trail. I
only had about ten miles to do to my campsite, so I took my time. The weather
was chilly and nasty for parts of the afternoon. However it brightened up into
the evening. I had a wonderful dinner next to a pure bubbling stream, hiked a
few more miles, and pitched my tent to shelter me from the winds that were
picking up.

Sunday morning dawned cool, but sunny. I was up and hiking
by about 6:30AM. The squatters who had taken over my designated campsite (I
opted to stealth camp a quarter mile away rather than tolerate their noise and
general disrespect) weren’t even close to being awake yet – sitting not five
feet from their tents was a garbage bag full of food scraps, evidently. THESE
people are the ones who habituate the bears, and ruin it for other hikers and,
more importantly, the bears. Rant over.

The scenery on Saturday was a more subtle kind. Most of the
day consisted of hikes up and down various side-ridges extending from the
ampitheaters. I enjoyed observing different climates and foliage types at
different elevations. By contrast, there was absolutely nothing subtle about
Sunday. It kicked off with a climb up to the “hat shop”, where orange hoodoos
are topped with white stones that look like they emerged from a tectonic
haberdashery.

Boring geology lesson: Bryce Canyon is not a canyon at all.
It’s more like Bryce-Plateau-Slowly-Eroding-Away, but most people don’t like to
contemplate their own mortality and transience while on vacation. The rim of
the plateau ranges from 7,000-9,000 feet in elevation. Two hundred days of freeze-thaw
per year, combined with extremely flaky sedimentary rock, causes massive frost
heaving and frost wedging. As anyone who lives in a wintry climate knows, the
freeze-thaw cycle destroys roadways and creates massive potholes. Bryce Canyon is
a pothole, on an almost cosmic scale. Often, harder areas of rock resist
erosion longer than softer areas, leaving behind pillars of rock called “hoodoos”.

I emerged from my stint in the backcountry by mid-morning on
Sunday. Most of the spectacular hoodoos and amphitheaters are actually
accessible from dayhike trailheads. I decided to string as many of these hikes
together to make one respectable day, although I was still carrying my
overnight pack. After running into another critical trail closure (rock slide
this time, probably also caused by those naughty and meddlesome bears!), I
connected about six different trails, dropping down into the amphitheaters and climbing
back up to the rim several times. While some trails (the short ones) were
crowded, the insanity of humanity was less oppressive than I expected on the
holiday weekend. Clearly, hiking four miles is just too much work for 90% of park
visitors! I ended up doing about 15 miles of trail that afternoon, and after dropping
my borrowed bear canister off at the ranger station, headed down to the nearby
town of Tropic for something to eat.

And boy did I eat! Evidently 15 miles with 5,000 feet of
elevation gain, with a pack and several liters of water, gave me quite the
hiker hunger. I flipped back into thru-hiker mode, and ordered seconds – at a restaurant!
I was sorely tempted to order thirds, but figured I should probably leave the
place before they put a lien on my car (side note: for this trip, I
re-christened her the “Hoodoo-Baru”). I was still rather bummed about missing out
on 20+ miles of backcountry hiking and was looking for something to do on
Monday. I had pretty much exhausted Bryce (it’s a small park), and my
misanthropic tendencies ruled out battling the hordes of humanity in Zion
National Park on the holiday. Enter – the pizza shop placemat-map. I noticed
that Cedar Breaks National Monument was not too far from Bryce, and the road
from Bryce to Cedar Breaks passed through Forest Service land. I decided to
sleep on USFS land that night and visit Cedar Breaks in the morning.

Cedar Breaks was totally unexpected, and totally
spectacular. It was formed by the same processes that produced Bryce, except
Cedar Breaks is 2,000 feet higher; its rim is around 10,500 feet. There was
still plenty of snow at that elevation. I arrived very early in the morning;
there was no one there. I looked around, did a quick four-mile hike to an
overlook, and came back. There was still nobody there! Cedar Breaks was a
great, low-key but spectacular way to spend Memorial Day. After a quick hike up
a local peak (which, incredibly, was relatively snow-free even at 11,300 feet),
I headed back to Salt Lake City.

Overall – Bryce didn’t go according to plan, however my
change of plans allowed me to do a couple things that I otherwise would not
have done. In the end, it’s as much about just getting out there, sucking
oxygen, doing something, as it is
achieving a particular goal or hiking a particular trail. A weekend well spent.

Back by popular demand: Utterly Impractical Hiking Item of
the Week. The aforementioned mountain, Brian Head, was about a 1,000 foot climb
from the surrounding plateau. There’s a gravel road that goes to the summit.
But in late May, that’s a merely theoretical proposition. I left the ole
Hoodoo-baru right off the main road, and hiked a mile and a half up to the
summit. There was no trail, but I was able to dodge the snowfields effectively
and got to the top with relative ease. Not so for the poor sucker who decided
to drive to the top! Instead of parking where I did, he tried to drive over the
snow. Needless to say, he got stuck. So did his two buddies, who came in their
pickups to pull him out! In the time they spent trying to extract their
vehicles, I had summited, eaten lunch, taken a few photos, and descended.
Meanwhile at least one truck was still stuck halfway up the mountain road. When
I finally left a scene, yet another pickup had arrived on scene. This one,
though, was a contractor, and he was pulling a bulldozer.